


Shenanigary

by Moooses



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory Negotiations, more characters are gonna show too im just not tagging them until bc that'd be rude, more relationships will be added as it goes on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 00:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15960443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moooses/pseuds/Moooses
Summary: Cait groans, “I hate all of you.”“Oh, you love us.” Deacon says.“I don’t even know who you are!”-------------------------------------------------Sole Survivor Hope goes adventuring a lot, and leaves her companions behind in Sanctuary where they, maybe, hopefully, learn to get along.(aka my self-indulgent fic where the companions actually say more than one sentence to each other)





	Shenanigary

**Author's Note:**

> Literally only writing this because I had a twitter thread that got a bit out of control.  
> This is in the process of being beta'd but I'm impatient and excited to share soooooo, edits will come later.

“It’s like...everytime I close up a hole in a wall, it opens back up the second I look away,” Struges complains, staring at the exposed wall.

Preston nods, looking at the same spot. “You think someone is taking them back down?”

“There’s no other explanation, but I don’t think any of the six of us would do that.” He props his hands on his hips and stares at the cursed wall, like that will fix it.

A single bark turns both their heads, and Dogmeat almost takes Preston to the ground. Struges barely grabs him in time, and once steady, they look and spot Hope approaching with someone new.

“Dogmeat, down!” She laughs, and Dogmeat frees Preston at that and curls around her legs. “Hello again.” She grins.

Preston nods in greeting. “Who’s your friend?”

The new girl sticks her hand out, and he shakes it. “I’m Piper, Diamond City reporter. You’re the Minuteman guy, right?”

“I am. Preston Garvey, at your service.” He drops her hand and nods towards Struges. “This is Sturges, our engineer.”

She shakes his hand as well, and they exchange a quick greeting.

“I’m showing Piper around Sanctuary; she’s writing a story about me, and I thought a tour would help.” Hope says, and Piper leans forward with a glint in her eye.

“Did you know how old she is?”

Preston chuckles. “Yes, we’ve been over that.”

Piper looks to Hope excitedly and quips, “can we see the vault?” And at Hope’s obvious hesitation, goes: “...Or not. We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Hope sighs, clearly relieved. “Maybe some other time, okay? Preston,” she turns to him. “We’re going to be traveling for a while after this, can you watch Dogmeat for me?”

“Of course.” He answers, and can feel the excitement of ‘we get to dogsit?’ radiating off of Sturges.

Hope thanks him and walks off; Piper doesn’t follow immediately.

“Why did you ask the lady who went through hell in that vault to return there?” Preston asks.

“Shut up, Garvey.” Piper grumbles, following after Hope.

And that’s the last he sees of the two of them before they leave, Hope most likely being her absent-minded self and forgetting to say ‘bye’. She doesn’t return for over a month, and in that time, settlers keep trickling in, having heard about Sanctuary from Diamond City Radio.

 

When she does comes back, it's a few moments behind raiders.

“Oh, Mum's come to save us all!” Codsworth is the first to see her, and she yells a noise of frustration at the Mr. Handy for giving her away.

She's crouching behind a car; two other people that Preston can't make out are with her. With the raiders now pinned between her group and the people of Sanctuary, she throws him some weird hand signal he doesn't get, before lobbing a grenade right into the middle of the bridge. Preston only has a second to mourn the poor bridge before it goes off, finishing off the raiders. The bridge, somehow, remains intact.

Hope leaves the group to walk over on their own to go squat by the bodies. The group turns out to Piper, complaining loudly about junk to the other person, an obvious synth. Preston raises his laser musket and Piper throws a hand out in front of the synth.

“Calm down, fancy-pants, he's with us!” she shouts, and Hope pauses her looting to pull his barrel downwards.

“Preston, meet Nick Valentine. He's a detective and he's helping me find Shaun.” She levels a look at him over a pair of glasses she didn't have before.

“Are you sure-” he starts.

“Yes.” The look doesn't leave until he nods and holds out his hand. He does owe her his life after all.

“Preston Garvey, Minuteman.”

Nick's grim is firm and surprisingly warm. “Nick Valentine, though you've just been told that.” His yellow gaze makes Preston uneasy, but he reminds himself that Hope clearly trusts him.

“We’re not staying long, sorry.” Hope says when they break. “We just escorted Piper here, she wants to do a story on the Minutemen's return. I promised you’d answer some questions, hope you don’t mind.”

Piper snorts at the word ‘hope.’

Preston gives her an easy smile. “Anything for you General.”

Piper whistles as Nick speaks, “General, huh?”

Hope rubs at her neck. “Yeah, it’s new...but uh, that’s all, nice seeing you, tell Sturges I say hi.” She darts forward and places a kiss on his cheek, and before he has the chance to be flustered she turns and kisses Piper square on the mouth. Then Hope grabs Nick by the wrist and practically bolts for the bridge.

Preston stares at Piper. “You two are a thing?”

“Yep.” Piper pops the p, and rocks back on her heels. She has the smugest of smug looks and won’t break eye contact.

Preston looks down, unsure what to think but refusing to comment. It may have only been a few months since Hope came out of the vault, but if she felt ready for a relationship again, he’d let it be. He turns to walk. “So, you wanted an interview?”

She easily keeps pace besides him, pulling a clipboard and pen out of thin air. “So,” she clicks the pen. “Give me the basic rundown. History, goal, achievements, so I can get the gist and ask the right questions.”

Preston knows it's going to be a long interview.

 

Piper leaves a few days after she interviews Preston and the others, and returns within a week.

Preston comes down from the guard post as Piper crosses the bridge.

“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.” He says honestly.

She shrugs, then pulls her bag to her side to dig through it. “Me neither. I mean, I was planning to come give you a printed copy of your story, but I may have pissed off the mayor again and figured I could lie low here for a bit.” She pulls a rolled up paper out and hands it to him.

Unrolling it, Preston reads the headline; “The Minutemen’s Long Deserved Comeback?”

“You’ve gathered quite a following recently.” Piper points out, and he can’t argue. Hope had been saving settlements left and right, and people were joining the Minutemen in steady numbers. Preston was even thinking about storming the Castle.

“Besides,” continues Piper. “People love a good underdog, and you’re a good guy, Garvey.”

“Only because of the General’s--”

“Uh-uh-uh-nuh.” Piper interrupts him, “that's what I’m talking about, that modesty. That and how you try to help everyone.”

Preston stands still, unsure how he’s supposed to respond. “It's the right thing to do.”

Piper smiles and shakes her head. “Wow, Hope wasn’t kidding when she said you don’t stop with the modesty. Called you an actual saint.”

The back of Preston’s neck starts to burn. Hope, the one who was actually out there helping after her whole world died, called him a saint? All he’d been doing was telling her where to go, a glorified map.  
“If anyone here’s a saint, it’s Hope.” 

“While I won’t argue that she’s been doing a whole lotta good, don’t sell yourself short Garvs.” Piper gives him a look he doesn’t really understand, raised eyebrows and almost a look of knowing, and Preston decides it’s time to end the conversation.

“You should go show this to the others,” he hands back the paper. “I know Struges was excited for it.” He doesn’t wait to climb the guard post’s stairs back to the top.

He stares out into the distance as Piper looks at the paper, then up at him. She shakes her head again and starts to walk deeper into Sanctuary. “Alright,” she drawls. “See you around.”

 

That night, Piper brings dinner to his guard post. She hopes up the steps and holds out a bowl of radstag stew, one for herself in her other hand.

“Bon appetit.” She says smiling.

“You didn't have to, I was going to get something when my shift ended.” He says, taking the bowl anyways.

“If you mean you were going to open a box of sugar bombs, I don't think that counts as a real meal.” There's no malice in her voice, only teasing.

Preston feels himself flush, knowing he's done exactly that more than a few times now. “I was going to have the leftovers.”

“Oh please, no one is going to let perfectly good stew go cold just in case you might have some.”

Preston opens his mouth but she continues.

“Don't try lying to me again either, you're really bad at it. Hope told me she's caught you doing that on several occasions. Also said they're your favorite, and that's why I had to haul them back here with all that other crap she makes me carry.”

Piper leans back against the wall of the post. “She talks about you a lot, actually.” She says casually, stopping to eat her stew.

Preston almosts asks, about how often, about what, was it good or bad, and a whole slew of things he should not be asking her girlfriend.

Instead, he just looks out across the post. “I’m glad she sees me as important an ally as I see her.”

Piper hums at that, and lifts a spoonful to blow on. “She has no idea you like her back.”

Preston nearly drops his god-damn-bowl.

“W-whats?!” He sputters, “how did you know?”

Piper flicks her eyes up from her stew to his face, then back down. “I didn't.”

Preston feels his whole face burn. He wouldn't blame Piper if she killed him and tossed his body in the river for even thinking about Hope like that.

“I wasn't going to do anything-” He starts.

Piper cuts him off. “Well that's disappointing.”

Preston's shame is partially replaced with confusion. Piper clearly sees that when she glances up from her stew again.

“Oh c'mon Garvey.” Piper says, putting her bowl aside. “I'm not gonna shoot you.”

He rapidly tries to pull himself back together. “I thought you'd be mad.”

“I was at first,” Piper crosses her arms.”When I started to suspect. I'm normally the jealous type, so I assumed the worst and went right into investigating and lo and behold, found out you two were still the incredibly nice people I already knew you were.”

She shrugs and looks down. “So I stopped being mad about it. And when I stopped being mad about it I noticed that sometimes, when she talks about you, there's this sadness to it. I also noticed despite that sadness, she didn't have an ounce of regret about choosing me. It started getting to me.

“I did the same thing to her that I just did to you. Made a comment about her liking you, she freaked out, apologized, said she couldn't help it. I surprised us both when I said I didn't mind.”  
That’s a lot to process.

“She likes me back?” Is where Preston starts.

Piper takes a deep breath. “Yes. That’s literally what I started with. ‘Like her back,’ is what I said. She makes this… face at you, when you’re not looking.”

He nods. “I know what face you’re talking about, I’ve seen Hope direct it at you.”

Piper kicks off the post wall, standing straight.

“Listen,” she says. “I’m not a hundred percent on how I feel about this yet, but whenever she comes back, talk to her?” She grabs her bowl and walks down the steps of the guard post, then towards the house with the room she’d claimed.

When she’s gone Preston lets out a huge breath and prays his shift ends soon.

 

Piper comes outside late one day, Struges spotting her near instantly. He waves and calls her over.

“What’s up?” She asks when she reaches him.

“You’re working in the garden, then repairs, and after that you have guard duty-”

“I thought you guys volunteered for this stuff.” She interrupts.

Struges shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Sorta? We try to have everyone stick to what they’re good at, but still do a bit of everything. Preston signed you up for equal shares of everything though, since you’re new and we don’t know your strengths yet.”

Preston can feel Piper’s gaze shift onto him as he talks to Jun. For a second he’s afraid she’s going to be mad.

“Yeah sure, sounds fair.” Piper responds. “Point me to the garden.”

Preston really needs to stop misjudging her.

He says bye to Jun and heads over to the bridge to start his patrol. He hasn't even reached it when he spots Hope and Valentine walking over.

Hope spots him at the same time and grins, sprinting over and leaving Valentine behind.

“General's back!” He turns to yell back at the others.

When he turns back around Hope runs right into him and hugs him.

“Hi Preston!” She says, quickly kissing him on the cheek. “Good news, we have a lead on Shaun, and I also found a nice spot for a settlement. I need to clear it out though so I'm taking Codsworth for a week or so. I’m dropping Nick off to meet everyone while I do that.”

Hope sees something over his shoulder and lets go. “Pipes!”

She runs the short distance to Piper, who's come over and joined them. They kiss and hug each other.

“Aren't they just a pair.” Valentine says, standing next to Preston.

He nods, Piper's talk with him coming to mind.

Nick looks around. “I see you've improved since I was last here.”

As Nick is taking the place in, Hope pulls back and looks at him with a look Preston definitely recognizes.

Preston looks to Piper to see if she caught that, and the face she gives him lets him know she definitely did.

She lets go of Hope completely and puts her hands on her hips. “Well, I'm not gonna slow you down. Go do what you gotta do Blue.”

Hope nods at her, kisses her again, and hurries farther into Sanctuary, Nick trailing behind.

Once the two are out of earshot Preston and Piper step closer together, watching them.

“We both saw that?” Preston asks.

“Oh my god she likes Nick too.” Piper whispers, roughly answering the question.

Preston doesn't bother with whispering.”Do you think he knows?”

“He should, detective and all. Think he likes her?”

“You know him better than I do.” Preston watches the duo start talking with Struges.

Piper shakes her head. “I've never seen him like someone before, wouldn't know his tells.”

“I suppose you're going to talk to him too?”

She squints. “Nah.”

He gives her a look. “But you spoke to me.”

“Yeah, but with you I actually knew. You're really obvious.” 

Preston feels his face heat.

“Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get my hands dirty. Try and get the guts to talk privately with her.” Piper swiftly walks away, leaving Preston to actually start his patrol.

**Author's Note:**

> Bare with me folks, once we get everyone together then the fun can really start. Just gotta, get them all together first. Please, just, hold on for a chapter or two.


End file.
